Ali Protik is a senior research scientist in the International Programs department at NORC at the University of Chicago. He is an economist specializing in the design and impact analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations. His work focuses on several areas of international development, including education, energy, and democracy; human rights and governance (DRG); and education policies in the U.S.

At NORC, Protik is currently the co-principal investigator of an impact evaluation of a USDA-funded project aimed at improving food safety standards in Egypt. He also provides technical leadership for several USAID-funded impact evaluations of DRG-sector projects in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tanzania. In addition, he serves as the senior technical advisor for two USAID-funded projects--a performance evaluation of two projects aimed at improving agricultural sector productivity and nutritional outcomes in Honduras and an impact evaluation of a cocoa farm rehabilitation project in Ghana.

Prior to joining NORC, Protik worked at Mathematica Policy Research for 11 years and at the Center for Health and Population Research in Bangladesh (commonly known as ICDDR,B) for two years. During this time, he led the impact analysis of several development projects using a variety of designs, including a literacy project in Rwanda using a randomized controlled trial (RCT); four school dropout prevention programs in India, Cambodia, Tajikistan, and Timor-Leste using RCTs; a school construction project in Burkina Faso using a regression discontinuity design; and an electricity line expansion project in Tanzania using propensity-score-based matching techniques.